From One Entrepreneur to Another

EPCC Small Business Development Center Network for the South-West Texas Border

This week Art Anchondo, a SBDC Business Development Advisor, visit the College of Business to discuss and give insight on How to Create a Business Plan. He gave a lot of information on starting a business based on his personal experience.

He started his own apparel manufacturing company in 1983 and worked as President of the company for more than 20 years. The company was headquartered in El Paso, Texas with manufacturing facilities in Mexico. It produced apparel products for several brands in the U.S.

He talked about important facts to have in mind when starting a business. Mostly about financial topics, because banks look into that when you apply for a loan. He also spoke about personal financials and how to upkeep with them. Although, the first things should always be to have passion for your business, loving what you do.

In more detail, he gave recommendations for the pre-business plan. He mentioned the following:

One of the facts is that there is a small majority of business that are self employed (99% nationally) so why not try it out!

"Learn to Fly," he used this to say to learn the rules, and try new things, love what you do.

It is very important to keep connections, these are the persons who will help you along the way, and to always network!

As an entrepreneur, it will be necessary to make sacrifices and/or miss important events in life.

He advises that if you own a credit card, make sure to use it wisely, do not max it out, and pay it off! Do not cancel it! Your credit score for loans will be based on your personal credit. A great credit score  is 650, but a better one would be 700 and above.  One of the websites where you can check yours for free annually is at annualcreditreport.com .

Another thing Anchondo mentioned was to not allow for banks to discourage and send you away telling you to come back with a business plan. The first time you meet with a financial advisor, it would be best to take your personal financials, along with your personal net worth, credit score, and/or your resume so that the bank can see right away you will be a good candidate.

Lastly, he mentioned having an alternative finance plan. This can be done through crowd-funding.This practice will allow you to raise money from a large number of people through the Internet. There are many ways of doing so, it just takes your personal passion and drive to make your plan happen.


||Carla Villaverde||

Joven Emprendedor

Creo yo, que existimos muchos jóvenes con un hambre de emprender y comernos el mundo de los negocios de una sola mordida pero muchas veces por alguna u otra razón no siempre podemos lograr nuestras metas o propósitos. Existimos otros jóvenes  con mucha iniciativa e ideas brillantes, pero no sabemos por dónde empezar o no contamos con suficientes recursos para llevar a cabo algún proyecto. Este es un problema con el cual nos enfrentamos los jóvenes día a día. Tenemos las ganas, las ideas, la creatividad; pero muchas veces falta lo más importante, el dinero, el cual es difícil de conseguir ya sea porque nuestros padres o los adultos no tienen fe en nosotros o porque no cuentan con la capacidad económica para apoyar.

Es por esa razón, entre otras, que aprovecho para platicarles de un apoyo muy padre y conveniente para nosotros los jóvenes emprendedores! Si estas interesado en poner un negocio en Ciudad Juárez o mejorar el negocio que ya tienes, el INADEM te puede ayudar, ya que acaba de sacar apoyos para jóvenes de hasta 80 mil pesos a fondo perdido! Lo único que tienes que hacer para solicitar uno de esos apoyos es tomar un curso en línea, impartido por ellos, por ese medio el INADEM te ayudara a realizar tu plan de negocios, o bien mejorar el que ya tienes. Al terminar el curso presentas tu plan de negocios y en base a el costo de tu proyecto te dan un apoyo de hasta 80 mil pesos! Creo yo que es la oportunidad que muchos jóvenes han estado esperando, así que ahora no habrá más excusas para no hacer tu proyecto realidad!

Para iniciar, métanse a la página y ahí viene toda la información!

http://incubadoras.inadem.gob.mx

Eric Valdes | Guest Blogger 

Beneficial Technology

     It is common knowledge that most Hispanics working in the United States have part of their families living in their country of origin or say where they ancestors decided to stay. Countries such as Mexico, where most Hispanics send money back home to their families has become a great deal for monetary banks to help these Hispanics transfer money, but sometimes at a high cost compared to the total money people actually send.

 

Entrepreneur Marco Montes saw this problem as a door for opportunity to help. As he said in a recent interview conducted by writer Chloe Hurt for Ripple, Mr. Montes says: "As a result, I decided to build a transparent, efficient, and simple service, one accompanied with financial education, to tackle this problem at the core, to disintermediate the bad guys, and empower those who need the most help.

He developed an application called Saldo.mx that people can download from Google Play app store. Anyone from the U.S. can send money to pay utilities bills back in Mexico. What is interesting about this application is that "There are already at least 500 people using Saldo.mx for cross-border utility payments. What’s truly exciting to me though is that many of our customers are using the platform for small transactions, such as 10 or 20 pesos. So they’re sending the equivalent about $1 USD. With the current system, those kinds of transactions simply aren't feasible." Mr. Montes explains.

The application works with several Mexican companies from where you can pay another's person bills, so people here can send money right away from their mobile device. People using the application can also check previous movements of their money and current money balance.

With all being said, this could be used as a good example for noticing how people in common and millennials  are being and becoming more technology savvy and adapting this to needed activities of their daily lives, this, apart from the opportunity of new business. 

CfHE | Carla Villaverde 

Ripple | http://goo.gl/UlHAoD

SaldoMX | Saldo.mx

From a Valentine's Day disaster to an entrepreneur success

Entrepreneurs seek to find problems with every day obstacles.

Even in days like this weekend's national holiday of Valentine's Day, why not mention some of the loving that seems to be swirling around the media.

In an article from written by Carly Okyle talks about how a terrible situation occurred on a day that couples seem to focus on. A booked night at an elegant hotel ruined plans for Kevin Yu and his girl friend. He ended up coming with an idea that most women would love. He decided to attempt to pull off a home cooked meal for his girl friend. Quickly trying to search for online recipes and YouTube videos, the dinner was a complete disaster. Little did he know he was stirring up more than a fancy dinner.

From this event, Yu came up with an app that allows those who use it an easy, step-by-step tutorial into cooking "fancy" meals with just a click away.

Keeping up to date with technology and problems allowed this individual create a business.
Success has been a part of this story of Yu, named "Best Apps of 2014" by USA Today.

What keeps people hiding from their potential disasters?  Could it be because you are afraid to fail? But what if you succeed?

Lydia Gonzalez

 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242866

http://www.sidechef.com/#features

 

Latino struggle into the high-tech sector

Latino struggle into the high-tech sector.

More and more Hispanic entrepreneurs keep on growing every day. Opening businesses and as well as many industries also are trying to target the Latino audience. This growing rate goes fast but it is known that most of these businesses are placed in the service sector. It is rare that a Hispanic entrepreneur opens a high technology business or that one non-Hispanic technology business that is already established has as a goal to help Hispanics.

The culture diversity in high-tech companies varies, but the updated numbers were recently shared a few months ago. Companies such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Twitter have an average of 3% of Hispanic employees. This low number could tell us that not so many Hispanic entrepreneurs are really considered in the high technology world.

So it is new that this past November Google Entrepreneurs partnered with Manos Accelerator, a company that develops ‘a global support system of Latino mentors and ambassadors that can advise Latino companies in their road to success’.

That’s why Manos Accelerator is a good example of the potential solution to what Manos Accelerator CEO Edward Avila says; the gap is largely attributed to a lack of "advisors that are Latino that can be role models and can help open doors."

Given this information we can say that if more Hispanic mentors were available, the Latino technology sector could grow more easily. Hispanic innovators who share their knowledge and networks are needed. 

Entrepreneur...what?

Personal Insight.

What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? YOLO baby! Living only once seems to be the trend nowadays. Having the world open to you allows your dreams to be put into action. To me, being an entrepreneur is allowing my young dreams come to life in my adult life. When I was younger, I dreamed of one day being a business owner along with my dad. Hearing stories about how my grandmother always wanted to open up a restaurant gave me the ambition to one day fulfill her dream. Now that I’m a business student in progress, soon to be a Business school graduate has allowed me to really understand what it means to be in business.

According to the article by Saltzman “Why the Hell Would Anyone Want to Be an Entrepreneur?” passion, excitement, crazy individuals, change, and meaningful relationships were reasons why people chose the path of an entrepreneur. Not clarifying that those were the exact reasons, those points Saltzman mentioned can be followed.

“Have I gone mad?” “I'm afraid so... you're mad. Bonkers. Off your head... but I'll tell you a secret... all of the best people are.” Quote taken from Disney’s remake of Alice in Wonderland 2010. Being a little crazy in a sense of taking on challenges and living on the edge of adrenaline. Crazy individuals plan with flexibility among their goals taking twists and turns just like Saltzman states. In the end, passion must be the main driver of being an entrepreneur. If there is no passion from the beginning, the twist and turns might become unending cliffs. 

 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238249

Lydia Gonzalez